You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Of Our Favorite Ballads - #135

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

Today, Adam and Peter list their favorite ballads to play and listen to. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Peter Martin and I'm Adam Nannis. You're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily jazz advice coming at you. That's right. And so today is a day. So let's get some jazz advice coming at you. If it's a day, there's jazz advice coming at you for sure. That's right.

Yeah, yeah. Welcome, everybody. We're very excited today. We have some YouTube live followers watching us for the first time. Yesterday was Facebook live. I was going to say, we're live in it out. We're live and out. We're living and out.

We are. We are live. We're jumping all over the plate. Maybe tomorrow we'll do LinkedIn live. I was going to say, is this going to be a regular thing we're going to do? We're going to live stream. You know, if the people want it, we'll do it right now. That might be cool. I mean, of course, this is still first and foremost audio podcast. That's our beloved fans, and we'll always be there for you first. But we thought some people might want to see a little bit of behind the scenes. I mean, it's so professionally put together. I know everyone thinks there's a lot of trickery and editing.

But we wanted to go live to show them how truly off the cuff this is. Well, also, we're just so beautiful to look at that it was, we just thought it was a travesty. That's right. That's why we had it very darkly lit. here we've got plants covering us and stuff you can't even see my face on this one it's great that's good so what are we talking about today so today we're going to go over seven of our favorite ballads oh good i love ballads not six not eight but ballads and seven we're sure about this people like seven people like people loving the seven so far so um maybe i'll start it off is that cool i was going to say at some point can we do like a best of like seven of our favorite seven lists that we've made

that's right the top seven yeah yeah that would be good cool all right you got it okay so i'm going to start out with sophisticated lady. And this is written, this is Duke Ellington, right? Not Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. I think this is solely Duke. Solely Duke Ellington. Please let us know if we're wrong on that because that would be a huge error to start

out of. So I actually put this one first and I put it first for you because you kill this song. Your version of this song is my all-time favorite. Oh, come on. I'm saying man. It's like, it's ridiculous. Thank you so much. I mean, I love this. I mean, to me, this is one of the most masterful

jazz ballads ever written and I think it's um I mean I just I love the melody I love the form you know we always think about like how the harmony and melody especially on ballads like how they interplay with the form because I think you know it's so important on any composition but especially a ballad where you've got you know the listener and the performer really have time to feel those little nuanced things between the form and the harmony and the melody and um you know du Gallantia just kills it on this. This one has all those nuances and more. I mean, this is a master, you know, and his masterpiece to me.

Yeah. Every movement, every melody, every chord change, it all feels like jazz so much. You know what I mean? It's got all the quality ingredients of a jazz composition that, you know, we love. And it's such a beautiful tune, memorable. And great with the lyrics or without. Good with the lyrics, but it stands alone as an instrumental. It really, truly great ballad.

Yep. Yeah. All right, so I'm going to jump in here with my favorite ballad to play personally, and that is I Fall in Love Too Easily. Amazing, amazing, amazing song. I probably should have looked up who wrote it. I could vamp on it a little bit. Yeah, vamp on a little bit.

I'm going to look up who wrote. So that's, I fall in love too easily. I'm thinking of that version on Seven Steps to Heaven. Yeah. That's when I first heard the tune, and it's probably not necessarily the most accurate. for the original but I mean I fell in love with that soon when I heard that recording for sure

that was like Victor Feldman and yeah so how are you doing the composer there? So good so you know what it's not like it was composed by Jule Stein and Sammy Kahn So it's not like it was like Caper Washington or something but so the first time I heard it was on

with Chet Baker singing it and that really got to me I think it was a teenager and I started playing it pretty much immediately Bill Evans does a great version of it and of course the Seven Steps to Heaven version for me it is a brilliantly written song to play. The lyrics are killing.

Oh, yeah. And gorgeous. Classic like American songbook standard. And really, really fun to play, really, really deep melody, great changes,

everything you want. Man, it's so fun when you find those ballads that just, I almost like to say it's like cheating, especially as pianist. Oh, yeah. All you have to do is play the tune

simply and accurate. I mean, anything you do above that is great, but if you just lay the tune out there, it makes you sound so good. Yeah, every voice movement sounds like it's where it should be. That's a well-composed tune. Yeah, and I always say, like, my first recommendation on playing great ballads

is let the tune come to you. Don't go around chasing after the tune. Oh, wait, or do I say it the other way around? Chase after the tune. Don't ever let it come to you. Be aggressive. Yeah, exactly. All right, number three,

I'm going to go with Lush Life, Billy Strayhorn. That's no small potatoes. Exactly. I mean, well, I mean, coming off a sophisticated lady, I mean, it's hard to where you're going to go. But, I mean, I think, Lush Life, and now this tune, I think, is really linked with the lyrics. I mean, he wrote the whole, I believe he wrote the lyrics and the composition. And I think that he wrote it when he was like 16 years old. So the story goes.

And so I just think that this is a masterful standard, you know, ballad. I actually think it's one of the greatest just American standard songs ever written. And it's kind of a little bit of an extent. ended form, but it's very, you know, it's very complex. We know as musicians, but to me, it comes across the listener when it's done well, and certainly, you know, we always think of the great Johnny Hartman recording from the great Johnny Hartman, you know, with John Coltrane. The great John Coltrane. Yeah, but you talk about a recording that's just not chasing the tune around, just letting it come to you, and just sort of laying it out. But the nuances of the melody and the slight little variations

once it goes into the main part of the melody are just spectacular. And it's amazing that people screw this tune up so much. Because all you got to do is play the tune. Yeah, that's it. But they mess up this melody a lot. But I'm in love with the tune. Do you ever play at Trio or do you almost only do it with a singer? I've done it both.

I've done it. I mean, actually, I haven't done this a lot with singers, although we recorded it. There's a great Billy Strayhorn documentary that was done on PBS maybe 10 years ago, eight years ago or so. and with Diane Rees, we recorded a couple tunes and did some different versions, and they ended up doing a duo version

that I have to say was my idea and came out great. Russell Malone was in the studio doing some other things, and I was like, man, this Lush Live, as much as I wanted to do it with Diane, like I said, this would be kind of because of how the key laid and stuff, I was like, try it as a duo

with Russell Malone, and it was just spectacular. I think there's a soundtrack to it too. That's great. But I've kind of done it more solo piano, a little bit of the trio. See, I've never, I've done it with, singers, but I haven't tackled it yet as a solo piano thing. I don't know. I think I'm waiting until I'm old enough, which is ironic because he was written when he was 16. I know.

But like I just, oh, such a mature tune to the lyrics. I know. I haven't felt, I don't know. I just haven't felt like I could sing it. But we'll see. Oh, don't, you can't sing it on my instrument. I just haven't. And I, you know, I'm not usually one who's like, oh, he wrote that when he was 16. I'm like, is what is it was a good. Yeah. But this one is something that's like, it's a masterpiece. If he was 35, he'd be like, how could you write that? You know what Yeah, so deep. So heavy. All right.

So I'm going to go the classic ballad, blue and green. Now this could be considered like a jam sessiony ballad for sure, but this is a pretty advanced ballad. This is hard to play. You can't to really understand

how to get in and around it. It takes a little bit of experience. I love playing this tune. I love the short form. I usually do the thing that they do on the record where they double the form and then quadruple it at the end.

Bill Evans goes to the changes really fast. I think that's an important part of the kind of i mean i it feels like it was probably something that they came up with in the studio as an arrangement yeah but that's sometimes some of the best parts of the tune you know yeah that's great um so that's number four i'm gonna go number five we're only on number five good because we got some good ones still to go number five i'm going to go with the maybe our first lesser known slightly lesser known uh sleeper a little bit and that's the lonious monk's That's good.

And I was thinking about different Thelonious Monk. He wrote so many great ballads. You know, Ruby My Deer, probably more well-known, certainly round midnight, of course, very well-known. Of course. And those are great. But I love reflections, and I thought it might be a fun thing. Some of you may not have even heard this tune. You could check it out.

He recorded several times. To me, this is kind of the epitome of monk's mastery of, you know, very simple forms with just a few little unusual things done on the ballad. He was kind of known as very quirky and personalized in his compositions, which he was. But to me on his ballads, they're just so beautifully laid out. But there's always like more subtle kind of little quirky things. And you'll hear that in this. The melody just do do do do do de, do de, da.

De, do de, do de da. Beautiful. Not the way I'm singing it. But, you know, just very lyrical melody and beautiful flow, beautiful interplay with the harmony and the harmony and the form like all these tunes, reflections. It says a lot about Monk. his ballads. Yeah. I feel like they reveal aside to his musical personality that, I mean, you get the rhythmic

thing and the, you know, the da-da-ba-ga, you know, all that really clever, fun stuff. And then you hear a ballad like reflections and you're like, man, how deep do these waters go? Like, this is crazy. Yeah. Love that, love that. I mean, I always kind of heard that connection compositionally with Duke Gallington, Billy Strayhorn, and Monk, because, like, with their ballads. Like, that's the connection there.

And I think there's that great recording, Philones Monk Trio playing Duke Allington. I love the way he just really like tenderly sort of respects Duke Allington's music and brings, you know, puts just a little of his own personality on it. Great stuff. That's awesome. Well, I'm going to go with a great ballad called What's New. It was a popular song by Bob Haggart with lyrics by Johnny Burke.

Is he one of the Haggard brothers? The country band? One of the Haggardie brothers. It's been recorded by a bunch of people. but I mean very, very many people. My favorite recording is Amademal's recording of this from Live at the Pershing. The arrangement of that version is incredible and ahead of its time. And it still brings out the beautiful melody that What's New has.

You know, it's an interesting, goes from minor to major, a bunch, goes to the four. It's simple, but there's little nuances. interesting melody that, you know, is not like everything else. I love playing this tune. I love listening to this tune. Yeah, this is another one that feels great on the piano. Totally. I'm thinking about that, you know, Sarah Vaughn recording of this.

Incredible. Yep. This is another one. What's new, the lot of harmonic, kind of immediate harmonic complexity and movement. Makes you sound good. Going down a major third. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff.

Okay, number seven, I'm going to go back to, well, no, this is not, yeah, it's kind of going back to Bill. Blue and green is Bill Evans, right? It's Miles Davis, in quotes. Okay, so I'm going to go with flamenco sketches and from the kind of blue recording. And this was definitely written, I think, originally by Bill Evans and then kind of collaborated or arranged with Miles Davis, I guess.

But I wanted, I was just thinking of something that doesn't have any lyrics. Not only doesn't have any lyrics, doesn't have any melody. Very unusual. So we could almost say, well, why is it a ballad? Well, because it's slow and because it has a ballad feel. But I love, you know, the uniqueness of this tune. And, you know, others have copied it. And it probably was done, I'm sure, before.

But it's just a succession of, what is it, five or six chords? I think it's just five chords. Six, seven, whatever. Less than ten, for sure. It's smaller than a bread bar. And it's just, you know, either eight bars or four bars, a symmetrical number of bars to play over each of these chords. And the way they flow and the brilliance behind it

and what it can evoke with some, great players playing over this is just amazing. And I love, you know, kind of getting boxed in when playing that tune to have to create melodies that are as beautiful as the chord structure is and that the tempo, you have to be patient and you have to fit in and you're exposed and the whole thing. It's really a challenge playing that tune. A lot of people think, oh, it's so easy because you don't have, all you've got to learn is a couple of chords. But to put that together and pull it off is something good. I think it's like it's almost anything from that entire kind of blue album. Like, oh, yeah, it's, it's easy, right? It's just simple. It's the blues.

Yeah, or there's, you know, there's D minor and E flat minor. That's right. Yeah, but in reality, sounding good on all this, all these, you know, slow, modal things is very, very tricky. Yeah, I mean, I think that they, as much as they box you into a certain sound, you know, like these specific chords or just, you know, D minor, Dorian or whatever. Right. As much as they do, they out, they, there's a lot of freedom there, um, but a lot of responsibility to create something great. I mean, you've got a lot of range there to do it, but you've got to like really cross all your T's, dot all your eyes in terms of how you're playing and creating. And I always find those kind of tunes, you have to concentrate to a level that,

like, what's new is great, but if you know the tune, you can kind of zone out and just play it. It's not going to be great, great, but it's because the tune is so great, it's going to sound good, you know? But on these, especially from Lanko's sketches, it's on you. You have to create, you know, the melodies. You can't blame the tune. You can't play in the tune. Those chord changes aren't going to make you just sound good automatically if you just play some scales over it or whatever. You know what I mean? You have to really be thoughtful with how you compose your solos. It's good stuff. Same thing with the one I, from the blue and green one. We kind of doubled up there a little. That's worth it. But same thing with so what? You know, anything from that record is the same thing. Yeah. Well, this is good. This nice little fun trip through seven ballads. We hope you enjoyed it. Nice little seven ballads list. If you have a favorite ballad, we went. want to hear from you, please go to you'll hear it.com.

Leave us a comment, leave us a voice message, and let us know what your favorite ballads are, or, you know, just say hi, pop in. Should we, a couple episodes ago, we talked about maybe getting our Twitter game on. And we had a hashtag specific to that episode, but we could go, we could say, if anyone wants to

shout out to us on Twitter, they could hit us up, hashtag, you'll hear it. Hashtag, you'll hear it. I'm liking, now we're getting into good hashtags. Yeah, so now this is going to be a little tricky because it's Y-O-U-L-H-E-A-R-I-T. Can we get that trending? Little you'll hear it?

A little hashtag you'll hear it. Yeah, let's try it. Okay, good. So hit us up there. I am Peter Martin, at I am Peter Martin. That's, you're looking at me very quizzically. I was just trying to remember what my Twitter. You're Adam Anus.

I'm just easy. I'm just adding underscore the other. I did, I did. No, you didn't. I did. No, I spelled it out and didn't say it. That's okay. Okay.

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